


Seeing Double

by hopeless_eccentric



Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [22]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Benzaiten Steel Lives, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Meet the Family, Other, Tenderness, Twin confusion, ben's on the carte blanche au, minor Cuddling and Snuggling, nureyev is a sap and also sometimes forgets his glasses, the mortifying ordeal of accidentally hitting on your partner's brother, while also accidentally proving that you're a good boyfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27465376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: While Ben’s first impression of Peter Ransom wasn’t too far off, at least from what he had heard from his brother, two important things quickly became clear. First, he was what Benten would affectionately call a ‘surprise hugger’ and unaffectionately call ‘a touch-starved venus fly trap.’ Second, he was blind as a bat without his glasses.Benten had learned both of those things the hard way.Free commission for @imightbeatomato on tumblr!!
Relationships: Benzaiten Steel & Juno Steel, Peter Nureyev & Benzaiten Steel, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921492
Comments: 71
Kudos: 276





	Seeing Double

**Author's Note:**

> not even gonna lie my beta and i took forever to get through this bc we kept laughing our asses off so it's a fun time
> 
> Content warnings for food mention, murder mention, a bit of humor-by-embarrassment that quickly turns into good-natured ribbing

Benten had never had too much of an issue with being mistaken for his brother. They dressed on opposite ends of the style spectrum, even as their own personal tastes shifted around. His posture and, as Juno called it, ‘resting approachable face,’ were often enough to separate them for any onlookers. The last time in memory someone had mixed up the two of them was a substitute teacher who had clearly left their glasses at home.

As such, Ben hadn’t expected their resemblance to be too much of an issue aboard the Carte Blanche, especially not after how damn happy the vessel seemed to be making his brother. With more time and energy, he had the chance to present himself the way he wanted. It wasn’t bad, not by a long shot, but it just wasn’t Benten.

By Ben’s measure, you would have needed a vision problem worse than Juno’s to mistake one for the other. 

Of course, there had to be someone on the crew who perfectly fit that mold.

Peter Ransom was a foot taller than Ben and always dressed to kill. His voice was a perfumed smoke and his teeth were sharpened into fangs. He had the posture of a soldier and the tactics of a mercenary, and of course, just had to be dating Benten’s brother.

As much as Ben’s first instinct was to corner him into interrogation, he held back. Even if neither of them spent much time waxing poetic about their happiness, at least in any measure that Benten could manage to listen to without making his brother die of embarrassment, Ransom had accidentally made his adorations clear enough.

While Ben’s first impression of Peter Ransom wasn’t too far off, at least from what he had heard from his brother, two important things quickly became clear. First, he was what Benten would affectionately call a ‘surprise hugger’ and unaffectionately call ‘a touch-starved venus fly trap.’ Second, he was blind as a bat without his glasses.

Benten had learned both of those things the hard way.

Old habit had dragged him out of bed one early morning, and the shimmering new promise of a kitchen with amenities and more than two different types of tea brought him before the stove and kettle before he could even begin to register where his legs had dragged him. The timed lights on the ship had yet to wake further than their dim glow, so the gradually rumbling kettle was lit only by the amber of the stove light, one of the handful of automatic switches on the ship.

It was one of those mornings he would have treasured to spend alone, though the faint padding of footsteps that had been softened with years of practice interrupted that thought before it could begin to bloom. While he had not known Peter Ransom long enough to recognize him by his footsteps alone, his yawn carried an unmistakable tinge of his voice, as if his lungs were still trying to shake his vocal cords out of bed.  
Ben prepared to turn around, digging through his mind fruitlessly in search of something meaningless to say to break whatever tension existed between strangers made almost-family. However, he hardly came up with more than a greeting when Ransom’s arms, still imprinted with lines from his bedsheets, wrapped around his shoulders.

“Up early, my goddess?” Ransom yawned, voice muffled into the shoulder of what Benten was quickly realizing was definitely his brother’s stolen shirt. “I’m surprised, especially after—”

“Oh my God,” Benten sputtered. “Not your goddess.”

“Juno, I thought you liked—”

Ben swallowed down the heat in his cheeks and turned around, Ransom’s wrists still wrapped loosely around the back of his neck. 

Peter squinted at him, nearly unrecognizable between his bare face and the glasses he had left tangled in the bird’s nest of hair atop his head. He opened his mouth once or twice in confusion, and for the sake of his ego, Ben stifled a laugh.

“Ransom,” Ben repeated. “Your glasses.”

Peter blinked. His hands trailed away to return his glasses to his face, at which point his expression fell so comically Benten could have sworn he had only seen such a journey before in a cartoon. Ransom slapped a hand over his mouth, though before he could sputter out any kind of apology, the kettle screeched in sympathy and both he and Benten were spared the pains of having to look at one another for a single moment longer.

“You—” Benten tried to choke out as he poured the far-too hot water into his mug. “You want tea?”

“I think it would be kindest of me to spare you the trouble,” Ransom replied from somewhere beneath his hands, though his efforts to return the conversation to normalcy were about as successful as an effort to straighten a sheep’s hair.

“Do you need a cup of tea?” Ben clarified.

“I—“

“If you lie to me, I’m telling Juno,” Benten warned, a laugh somehow bubbling on the end of his voice. “What did you call him, your—”

“I’ll take the wretched tea, thank you very much,” Ransom groaned. “Dear Lord, I am so sorry.”

“Yeah, about that,” Ben snorted, turning away to pour Peter a cup and spare him the shame of having an onlooker while he gradually turned the color of a beet. “So, you and my brother, huh?”

As if patching the words over with an olive branch, Ben slid the still-steaming mug down the counter like a drink at a bar. Ransom managed to pry his hands off of a face clinging onto its composure long enough to take a sip from the mug. Benten was well aware the tea was far too hot to drink, but Ransom seemed to decide bearing the heat was a kinder fate than having his face unhidden for a moment longer.

“What about Juno and I?” He finally managed after a moment, his attempted composure wavering towards terseness.

“So, I take it you two are—” Ben paused when Ransom winced.

“Open about our affections,” Ransom grimaced. “If you would rather your brother and I were a little more subtle in public, I could have that conversation with him, though—and once more, my apologies for feeling the need to argue against the matter—I will admit, I would rather Juno suffer through a surplus of hopeless romanticism instead of a deficit, but—”

“Happy,” Benten finished, interrupting.

“Oh,” Peter breathed, so taken aback that he hardly had the time to practice the expression that overtook his face. “Yes. Quite so.”

“I’m not complaining about that,” Ben added quickly. “I mean, I’m still gonna leave the room, ‘cause Juno would kill me if I didn’t, but still. I’m not mad that you two like each other.”

Ransom opened his mouth once or twice to respond, but when for once, it seemed he had no smooth and easy words to reply, he busied it on the tea instead. 

As fearsome as Peter Ransom had seemed upon their first meeting, Benten could almost see what Juno meant when he called him cute. Objectively, at least from Ben’s viewpoint, Ransom was not a cute individual. He looked like the kind of guy who mixed rattlesnake venom with his lipstick and killed his enemies with a kiss. However, with his hair messed up and his glasses fogging and his face repeatedly fighting back winces as he tried to down more of his tea, Ben could almost grasp some shadow of what Juno saw in him.

That wasn’t to say there still weren’t obvious traces of what Juno usually liked in men. Ransom looked about as ready to kiss him as he was to kill him, and his tongue was half as sharp as the knives he kept hidden in each sleeve. For some reason, Benten couldn’t find it in himself to be too concerned about that.

When the two of them dragged each other to breakfast ten minutes late and still clinging to one another as if each moment were their last, Ransom let that deadly veneer slip. Peter Ransom didn’t seem like the kind of man who would drop a mask so easily, so when his usual professionalism faltered into a glowing smile he seemed to think nobody else could see, Ben could only assume it was worth more creds than any jewel he had ever stolen.

Ben hadn’t had a moment to corner his brother into a strict interview about the new boyfriend since he joined the crew, though, in that brief moment in which Ransom had kissed his shoulder and called him the sappiest pet name known to man, he had simultaneously done away with the majority of Benten’s worry.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to tease both of them relentlessly about it, however.

“Juno is—” Ransom finally replied, breaking off Ben’s train of thought. A hesitant smile twitched across his face, and for a moment, the dim kitchen lights seemed to soften that predatory grin into something nearly domestic. “Perhaps, the best thing to have ever happened to me, if you’ll forgive my sentimentality.”

“Your goddess?” Benten supplied, trying and failing to wrestle down his smirk into something presentable.

“Juno was right when he told me to avoid ever saying a pet name in front of you,” Ransom huffed. “Fine. My goddess.”

“Honey?” An all-too familiar voice slurred from the hall.

Ben’s face split into a grin in the same moment Ransom’s fell, his eyes going wide, then narrowing with an unspoken death threat. Despite his messy hair and a sleep shirt that he, like Ben, had definitely stolen from Juno, when he stood up a little straighter and pointed a single finger of warning at Benten, a shadow of his usual intimidation returned. 

That wasn’t gonna make Ben shut up, however, so he merely quelled his laughter behind his fist.

“Right here, love,” Ransom answered gently, the threat falling away when he smiled and opened his arms for an oncoming embrace.

Juno slumped into his arms with a happy little sigh. A smile Benten hadn’t ever seen lazed across his face like morning sunlight across a lake when he pressed his head into Ransom’s shoulder and huffed, as if taking a moment to lean into a hug had taken a year’s worth of weight from his shoulders. 

When he raised his head, he couldn’t seem to spare a glance for anybody but Peter Ransom, though Benten did note that his eyepatch blocked the half of the room in which he stood. 

“We have company,” Ransom warned, though his words faltered away into a smile when Juno raised a hand to his cheek.

“Don’t care,” he chuckled, pausing for a kiss so chaste and so brief that Ransom was left hanging and helpless for a tiny moment after they broke. “We always have company. They’ll survive.”

“Dear,” Ransom pressed.

“Goddess?” Ben suggested.

The moment in which domestic bliss had made its home on Juno’s face shattered when he spun, seething. 

“Benten!” He snapped, though those two syllables had managed to fit a lot more creative threats of bodily harm from just his inflection. Ben couldn’t help his laugh.

“Oh my God,” he snorted. “You need to have a talk with your boyfriend about making him wear his glasses.”

Juno rounded on Ransom next, though Peter had already thrown his hands up in a gesture of mock defeat. 

“An accidental hug and a pet name, I swear,” Ransom broke him off before he could so much as open his mouth. “Followed by a very candid conversation about your happiness, darling.”

“Yeah, that sounds great and everything, but you know what really makes me happy?” Juno sputtered out. “My brother not knowing any of this. God, I lived in a better world about five minutes ago. Now I have to deal with this shit.”

“Hey, it’s only one pet name, Super Steel,” Ben offered. “Not the end of the world.”

Ransom winced.

“It was a particularly private one,” he countered.

Juno’s face fell. Though he looked as if he were staring into his own grave while doing so, he mouthed something at Ransom.

“Dear God, no,” Peter replied quickly. “Not that one.”

“Wait,” Ben interrupted. “You’re telling me there’s a worse one I don’t know about?”

“You know what?” Juno huffed. “If I go find a hole to die in now, maybe Ransom here can tell you at my funeral.”

“I thought goddesses were—”

“As beautiful as I believe that sentiment was meant to be,” Ransom interjected. “I think the only logical step forward is to swear on our lives never to think of this morning again. Perhaps, we all merely ran into each other at an odd hour. Benten, I’d like to think the two of us have never spoken without somebody else in the room, save for one time when I apologized for brushing your elbow in the hall. Is that correct?”

“I dunno,” Ben chuckled. “It’s hard to give up this kind of opportunity, Super Steel.”

“Does Ransom know that in seventh grade you—”

“Yeah, no, I don’t think we’ve ever met,” Benten finished quickly.

Ransom’s lips curled into a winning smile that softened slightly when he took Juno by the hand atop the counter. 

“I’m glad to see we could all come to an agreement,” he returned. “Now, I’m afraid I’ll have to chase you both out of the kitchen. I believe the rotation said it was my turn to cook.”

“Nope,” Juno cut him off at the same time as Benten.

“Dear, I refuse to let you take my work once more,” Ransom scoffed. 

“And I refuse to cope with the side effects of your ‘eggs’ again,” Juno returned in the same tone.

“I can—” Benten broke off to stifle a snort. “Attempt a food-based apology for looking like your goddess, if you’d like.”

If looks could kill, Ben was pretty sure he’d be dead twice.

After a moment, however, Ransom’s facial death threat slackened. He shared a glance with Juno, who shrugged, even if his jaw had yet to relax and a stubborn fire still burned in his eye. 

“Look, at least his cooking is edible,” Juno offered.

“Whatever you say,” Ransom huffed as if Juno’s suggestion had been some great infringement upon his honor. However, his face soon broke into a smile and his lips found their place atop Juno’s forehead, still fixed and glaring, despite adoration’s attempts to shine through his eye. 

“Sure,” Juno snorted.

“My goddess,” Ransom added in a murmur against the top of his head.

“I hate you both so much,” Juno groaned.

“Why, then, don’t you go hate me elsewhere while we leave your poor, traumatized brother to his cooking?” Ransom laughed, his words hardly out of his mouth before Juno could take him by the wrist and drag him back in the direction of the quarters.

“This doesn’t mean I’m forgiving you,” Juno called over his shoulder.

“Sure you aren’t, Super Steel,” Ben snorted, though he had already turned his attention to the kitchen.

Maybe Benten didn’t know Peter Ransom half as well as he wanted to, or hell, even half as well as he knew some of Juno’s former partners. Maybe Peter Ransom was one of the scariest guys Ben had ever set his eyes on. Hell, maybe Peter Ransom was even as downright dangerous as he presented himself to be.

However, when Juno walked into a room that had Peter Ransom within it, some sharp thing within the thief’s eye grew a little softer and a smile that Ben knew hadn’t ever been practiced in front of a mirror passed across his face. He tugged him into extra hugs like every moment counted and worshipped their every second spent alone together. 

Most importantly, Ben was pretty damn sure he made his brother happy. Juno didn’t smile in the kind of way that faltered when his partner turned away. When he woke to find his bed empty, he sought out the one who had left it so and fell into their arms like there wasn’t another place in the galaxy he would rather be.

Maybe Benten didn’t know Peter Ransom, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t approve of him.

**Author's Note:**

> this one nearly gave me an asthma attack from laughing at my own jokes thank you
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill *insert threat here*
> 
> Make sure to check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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